Meet Sal Crivelli

We were lucky to catch up with Sal Crivelli recently and have shared our conversation below.

Sal, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?

I don’t know whether I would refer to it as resilience or just dogged stubbornness. I remember a moment very clearly on my second birthday party when my parents decided it was time for my scheduled midday nap. I was put in my crib, my parents shut off the lights and returned to the party. To my knowledge, I had never left of my own volition before then, but apparently I simply decided that point in my life was over. I climbed expertly out of the crib, made my way downstairs and rejoined the party. My parents came to the realization that not only was the midday nap over, but perhaps the whole “crib arrangement” needed a revisit. From high school to the present, I’ve been faced with a great many circumstances from which I could (and probably should) have moved on. If I had, however, I would have never pursued script writing, video editing, cinematography, web design, comic book publishing, or any of the innumerable ventures which (though I didn’t know it at the time) would lead me to self-employment and the satisfaction of creative development.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

Pretty simply, I talk about comic books on YouTube for a living. And miraculously, somehow, I’ve managed to make a functional living from the job for over ten years. It’s an embarrassment of riches because not only do we have an unbelievably supportive audience, but I have an exceptionally talented team working with me on a weekly basis, composed entirely of my best friends (one of whom is my lovely wife). The brand is called ComicPop, and for over eleven years now, we’ve grown our initial show to a multiple channel network of podcasts, gaming streams and reviews about classic and current comic books and the surrounding comic book industry.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I’d have to say two major qualities that are essential to this job are also often at odds with each other, and it’s that duality that I think helps to continue ComicPop well over a decade: my resilience and my ability to adapt. On one hand, in order to survive in online content creation, you have to absolutely be willing to change, grow, and adapt to new information or changing trends in technology and distribution. On the other, you have to have the tenacity and resilience to persevere through lows, highs, and fleeting trends or emerging technology. I feel like those two aspects are constantly fighting off each other. The final quality which I believe has been essential in the proliferation of ComicPop is my taste in people. I have been astonishingly lucky in my friends and colleagues over the years, all of whom have challenged, supported, and inspired me to grow and evolve ComicPop to what it has become. If there’s any advice I can offer someone considering this line of work, I will tell you it’s lonely and isolating by design, and it’s deeply important to have a network of trustworthy people who challenge and inspire you to be better.

Okay, so before we go, is there anyone you’d like to shoutout for the role they’ve played in helping you develop the essential skills or overcome challenges along the way?

Without a doubt, my wife Tiffany consistently challenges me and pushes me to overcome obstacles and grow as a person. She’s a natural problem solver, and one of her strongest qualities is her ability to recognize and dissect a problem or challenge, and offer at least one or two clear solutions. It’s a quality I have to brute force to accomplish on my own, which often lacks the finesse and grace she possesses. She also knows me better than anyone, so she recognizes when I’m not devoting my fullest attention to an obstacle or challenge. It also helps that she’s deeply creative herself, and can often provide a fresh angle to an old or familiar problem.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Tiffany Zuber, Ben Baragona, Ethan Marsh, Kevin Conroy

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